


Collector’s Edition

by Juvinadelgreko



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, I know nothing about painting, Light Angst, Lots of musical references, William Clayton rules the aux cord, but adorable af, disasters with green paint, sentimental oliver, slightly emotional fluff, william and felicity love the spice girls because they just do ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 01:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14842662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juvinadelgreko/pseuds/Juvinadelgreko
Summary: Follow up to “Lucky”: Oliver, Felicity, and William paint Baby Queen’s nursery. Things get really messy and really adorable really fast.





	Collector’s Edition

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s the follow up to “Lucky”! Hope you guys love it! Drop a comment if you so wish!  
> Also, I highly recommend listening to the music from this fic while reading it—just makes it that much better :)

While Felicity had imagined herself in a wide array of situations with Oliver ever since she’d met him, this one hadn’t ever been one of them. “This one” being preparing to paint their child’s bedroom in a jovial pale green color while wearing ratty sweatpants and old t shirts, rather than preparing to put arrows in criminals in a forest green leather and Kevlar super suit. Neither one of them had stopped smiling since this morning, and they both knew that the root of their smiles was the fact that, at one point, neither of them thought they’d ever get to have anything like this. Oliver, who’d spent five years of his life wondering if he’d live to see the next day, and then came home prepared to die for his city. Felicity, who’d been content with her simple life as an IT girl after the devastating, perilous end to her college years. Until fate had nudged Oliver Queen into her cubicle. And any plans that either of them might have had for their futures had been shattered like glass in sunlight, and their lives had filled with new color. 

But they wouldn’t have it any other way. They’d gotten a glimpse of life without the hope of the other enough times to know. 

Felicity was pulled from her thoughts by the heavy, quick thunk of a paint can on the bedroom floor. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was William who’d just joined her in the room. She never heard Oliver passing through unless he wanted her to. 

“Your dad hauling the other can up?” She asked over her shoulder.  
“Yeah, he’s bringing that up with the rest of the paint brushes.” William replied.

Sure enough, Oliver enters the room a moment later with a second can. Math said they probably wouldn’t need it; but when it came to home improvement, Oliver and Felicity were as green as the color in those cans; and they’d wanted plenty of margin for error. Accompanying Oliver’s paint can were three roller brushes and a stack of paint trays. They had already taped newspapers to the floor and filled water bottles in preparation for their all-day project. 

Felicity watched as Oliver cracked open the first can of paint, and they all smiled at the smell of fresh paint as he poured some into each of the paint trays. William moved to where he’d parked his Bluetooth speaker in the corner and shuffled his Spotify queue. 

They loved it when William chose the music. His tastes were extremely varied and often contained a hodge-podge of everything. This playlist seemed to be comprised of upbeat, peppy songs. It was perfect. (Spotify playlist: “Energy” by Filtr.ie). They got to work. 

Oliver showed William the WikiHow tricks he’d learned on how to make sure the paint was even and would dry well, and he caught on quickly. He soon claimed the corner nearest the window as his personal project. Oliver chose the corner across the room from him while Felicity took the one next to him to start with. The ceilings were oddly high enough in the room that they’d needed to bring a stepladder in order for Felicity and William to be able to reach the tops of the walls. At the moment, William had occupied the stool as he painted along the top of the window. He was doing a surprisingly good job, and Oliver was deeply pleased with and proud of the care and precision he could see in every move the boy made. Nothing excited him more than William’s excitement for his new sibling. Oliver knew he’d be amazing with his little sister. That he still didn’t know was going to be a sister. His frustration in the matter cracked Oliver and Felicity up. 

“It’s my sibling! A human!” William had protested one day. “It doesn’t feel right to just keep calling it ‘it’!” 

“Yeah, and it doesn’t feel right to tell you yet either,” Oliver had said. 

Conversation over the painting began with William chattering idly about school, and Oliver couldn’t help but laugh as he and Felicity ranted about an English paper he’d recently gotten back with a B grade that, in William’s humble opinion, should have been an A. 

“I’m pretty I went over the assignment sheet fifteen times! I’m pretty sure I proofread it twice that many times! I answered all the questions I was asked in a logical manner, cited my sources, all of it!” He protested to Felicity. She answered

“I’ll have to look at this one. I mean, it sounds to me like you had the whole sha-bang, and I don’t doubt that, because you always do.” She paused, the continued, “I used to have similar problems in school, but only because I sometimes did more then I needed to. I would get so into what I was studying or writing about that I would get penalized for being too thorough.”

“I can believe it,” Oliver said, “For both of you.” He felt the sudden urge to have a serious talking to with anyone who’d ever disrespected the intelligence of his son or wife. 

William stepped off his stepladder and offered it to Felicity so she could set to work on the higher sections of her wall. Oliver smirked at the smudges of green paint on his shirt, hands, and miraculously, the one that had ended up on his forehead. She propped the ladder up and climbed to the top step, and while Oliver knew she was probably perfectly fine, he couldn’t help but inch closer to her when she stepped on to her toes to reach all way up. 

Before she’d gotten pregnant, Felicity had thought Oliver’s constant attentiveness and alertness when it came to her couldn’t have gotten any greater. She had been wrong. He’d already begun to wait on her hand and foot. He’d dutifully fetched everything she could ever want for, with the exception of her lament for coffee. As Oliver had put it, “No caffeine for Baby Queen!” Needless to say, that proclamation had upset Mama Smoak-Queen quite a bit, but she knew it was what was best. 

At some point, William must have changed the Spotify playlist, because Top 40 had suddenly become “Wannabe”. Oliver had never cared much for the Spice Girls, but he knew from their summer traveling the world that the same could not be said for Felicity. And, apparently, William. The crowed the lyrics of the songs back and forth across the room to each other. 

“Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want!” Felicity began.

“So, tell me what you want, what you really really want!” William continued. 

“I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want!”

“So, tell me what you want, what you really really want!”

“I wanna—, I wanna—, I wanna—, I wanna—, I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig, ah!” They finished together. Oliver couldn’t help but smile at how in they got to it. So in to it, in fact, that it was lucky Oliver noticed her foot slip on the ladder, noticed her hand coming into direct contact with wet paint, and it was only his lightning fast reflexes that saved her from tumbling into the paint trays on the floor. Felicity shrieked as he caught her, instinctually throwing her arm over his shoulders. 

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Oliver chuckled as he kissed her forehead. 

“You ok, Felicity?” William asked.

“Yeah, I’m good kiddo,” She said with a laugh.

It was when she went to detach herself from Oliver when she noticed what had happened to his shirt. Her hand felt almost sticky, and wet—the paint. She slid out of his arms and walked around to look at the back of him. 

“Oh no...” Felicity giggled. “You know, I’m tempted to say this shirt actually looks better with the giant green handprint on the back.” 

Giant, indeed. Her fingers had trailed green paint all the way down his back. William joined in the laughter, wiping his own paint-sticky fingers on Oliver’s shoulder. “There you go. Now you’ve got the full set,” he joked. 

“Special collector’s edition,” Oliver added with a smile. 

——-  
Even when they were officially done painting that nursery, Oliver never bothered to wash that shirt. He couldn’t. It was the full set. The fingerprints of his wife and son on the shirt that he’d worn to paint their child’s bedroom. His whole family, his world, pieces of his heart on a shirt. Yeah, maybe it was sappy, but Oliver thought that maybe, just maybe, after everything, his family deserved a little sappy. 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Again, like I said in the tags I have absolutely no knowledge of how to paint a house. 
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr! @JuvinaDelGreko


End file.
